gordianplotfandomcom-20200214-history
PERFECTION of the manuscript
Perfection(usually referred to as Elegance, Grace, Beauty)is the artistic finish put upon composition already elaborated. The essay being true, precise, perspicuous, powerful, the careful writer goes over it line by line, changing here a word, there an expression, until each word not only expresses his meaning but expresses it more happily than any other word could. The safest rule is never during the act of composition to study elegance or think about it at all. Let an author study the best models, mark their beauties of style and dwell upon them, that he may insensibly catch the habit of expressing himself with elegance; and when he has completed any composition he may revise it, and cautiously alter any expression that his awkward and harsh, as well as those that are feeble and obscure ; but let him never while writing thin of any beauties of style, but content himself with such as may occur spontaneously. He should carefully study perspicuity as he goes along ; he may also, though more cautiously, aim in like manner at energy ; but if he is endeavoring after elegance, he will hardly fail to betray that endeavor; and in proportion as he does this, he will be so far from giving pleasure to good judges, that he will offend more than by the rudest simplicity. —WHATELy. A man should so deliver himself to the nature of the subject whereof he speaks, that his hearer may take knowledge of his discipline with some delight : and so apparel fair and good matter that the studious of elegancy be not defrauded ; redeem arts from their rough and braky seats, where they lay hid and overgrown with thorns, to a pure, open, and flowery light, where they may take the eye, and be taken by the hand. —Bits Jogeon. A Change of Taste. —Blair's "Rhetoric, " founded upon the style of Addison as an ideal, treats of Beauty as characterizing writing of a certain kind. The author says : I am, indeed, inclined to think, that regularity appears beautiful to us chiefly, if not only on account of its suggesting the ideas of fitness, propriety and use, which have always a greater connection with orderly and proportioned forms, than with those which appear not constructed according to any certain rule. . . . There is, however, another sense, somewhat more definite, in which beauty of writing characterizes a particular manner ; when it is used to signify a certain grace and amenity in the tarn, either of style or sentiment, for which some authors have been particularly distinguished. In this sense, it denotes a manner neither remarkably sublime, nor vehemently passionate, nor uncommonly sparkling ; but such as raises in the reader an emotion of the gentle placid kind, similar to what is raised by the contemplation of beautiful objects in nature ; which neither lifts the mind very high, nor agitates it very much, but diffuses over the imagination an agreeable and pleasing serenity. Mr. Addison is a writer altogether of this character, and is one of the most proper and precise examples that can be given of it. Of the latter of these, the highest, most correct and ornamented degree of the simple manner, Mr. Addison is, beyond doubt, in the English language, the most perfect example; and therefore, though not without some faults, he is, on the whole, the safest model for imitation, and the freest from considerable defects which the language affords. Perspicuous and pure he is in the highest degree ; his precision indeed not very great, yet nearly as great as the subjects which he treats of require ; the construction of his sentences easy, agreeable and commonly very musical; carrying a character of smoothness, more than of strength. . . . If he fails in anything, it is in want of strength and precision, which renders his manner, though perfectly suited to such essays as he writes in the Spectator, not altogether a perfect model for any of the higher and more elaborate kinds of composition. From this search after beauty as an end there has been a marked reaction. It is no longer the languid, complacent style of Queen Anne's reign that is sought as a model, but the racy, vigorous utterance of the Elizabethan writers. The English mind, and, as an offshoot of it, the American mind as well, are not partial to the elegant qualities, specially in public oral addresses. We are jealous for our strength. We are proud of our Saxon stock. We are, therefore, morbidly afraid of imposing on ourselves by elegant literary forms. We are in this respect what our language Is, hardy, rough, careless of ease. The languages and temperaments of Southern Europe are in this respect oar opposites. We have cultivated learning at the expense of taste ; they, taste at the expense of learning. This prejudice, moreover, is often aggravated by affectations of the beautiful in literary expression. Affectations create caricatures of beauty ; these repel taste, as they repel good sense. That cast of character which leads a young man to wear long hair, and to part it in the middle, often appears in literature in a straining after the feminine qualities of style when no beauty of thought underlies and demands them. This nauseates short-haired man, and lends reason to their prejudice against the genuine because of the counterfeit elegance. The cant of literature, like that of religion, is never more disgusting than when it takes the form of the exquisite. Morbid delicacy rasps manly aerves. —Equmps. Such men, to be sure, have existed as Julius Ca3sar ; but in general a correct and elegant style is hardly attainable by those who have passed their lives in action ; and no one has such a pedantic love of good writing as to prefer mendacious finery to rough and ungrammatical trath. SmNET &um. Epigrams are short poems ending in a point or turn of wit ; as, An epigram is like a bee—a thing Of little size, with honey, and a ating. —MAIMIAL. Retort should perhaps be classed with the forms just referred to, as its effect depends upon the turn it gives to the words of the first speaker. Thus : A French officer reproached a Swiss for fighting upon either side for money, "while we Frenchmen, " said he, "fight for honor. " "That is natural, " replied the Swiss ; "Everyone fights for what he most wants. " One day Sheridan met two royal dukes in St. James's Street, and the younger flippantly remarked : "I say, Sherry, we have just been discussing whether you are a greater fool or rogue : what is your opinion, old boy ? "—Sheridan bowed, smiled, and as he took each of them by the arm replied, "Why, faith, I believe I am between both. "—Works. When Henry IV. was at Amiens, and very much fatigued, the mayor, with his council, came to pay their respects to him. The mayor began his harangue-in this way : "King forever blessed— very puissant, very clement, very great—" Then the Ring cut him short by saying, "And very tired, " and so ended the mayor's fine speech. A lawyer, fined for expressing contempt of Court, protested, urging with great earnestness that on the contrary he had carefully concealed his feelings. Brilliancyis perhaps the proper term to apply to language which puts the thought in such clear light, that the light itself attracts attention. To be memorable, style must possess something of this distinction. Dr. Johnson's fame now rests principally upon Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused with such a book. But his bow-wowmanner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced ; for no one, I suppose, will set Johnson before Burke, and Burke was a great and universal talker ; yet now we hear nothing of this except by some chance remarks in Boswell. The fact is, Burke, like all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very discursive and continuous ; hence he is not reported ; he seldom said the sharp short things that Johnson almost always did, which produce a more decided effect at the moment, and which are so much more easy to carry off. —Courarooz. I think Steele shone rather than sparkled. Those famous beaux-espritsof the coffee-houses . . . would make many brilliant hits—half a dozen in a night sometimes ; but, like sharp-shooters, when they had fired their shot they were obliged to retire under cover till their pieces were loaded again, and wait till they got another chance at the enemy ; whereas Dick never thought that his bottle-companion was a butt to aim at—nay, a friend to shake by the hand. -THAOICZELY. But brilliancy is legitimate only when it is the result of polish, of fine finish, of artistic completeness of utterance. We have no respect for the ideas of men that seek to say bright things for the sake of display. We look upon them, as upon professional wits (see page 129), as performers rather than as companions, dealing with words rather than with thoughts, fit to amuse us in idle mood, but not to be consulted when we are in doubt. When Ruskin says that he could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country BO miserable as to possess no castles, his aim is to be epigrammatic, but he only makes us impatient of his morbid affectation. When Professor Clifford leaves for an inscription on his tomb, "I was not, and was conceived; I lived and did a little work ; I am not, and grieve not, " the Spectator justly remarks that though many will think the epitaph fine, it would be finer if it were inscribed above a horse. Coleridge has made some of the most exact distinctions known in literature, but in the following he seems to have sought striking form rather than precise expression : Let young man separate I from Me as far as be posdbly can, and remove Me WI it is almost lost in the remote distance. "I am He, " is as bad a fault in intellectuals and morals as it is in grammar, while none but one—God—can tay, "I am I, " or " That I Works, vL 496. Euphony is another element of literary perfection. Words have their aristocracy. Some have a noble birth ; a magnificent history lies behind them ; they were born amid the swelling and the bursting into life of great ideas. On the contrary, there are words which have plebeian associations. Some are difficult of enunciation ; and, by a secret sympathy, the mind attaches to them the distortion, perhaps the pain, of the vocal organs in their utterance. A single uncouth word may be to style what an uncontrollable grimace is to the countenance. Neither is a thing of beauty. Words not inelegant in themselves become so through pedestrian associations which colloquial usage affixes to them. Our Yankee favorite "guess" is a perfectly good word, pure English, of good stock, and long standing in the language. A better word, in itself considered, we have not in English use. But because it is a colloquial favorite, used by everybody, on every variety of subject and occasion, and often in a degraded sense, as in the compound "guess-work, " it has become vulgar in the sense of " common ; " so that in many connections in which the real meaning of it would be entirely pertinent, the word would be nnelegant. "Conjecture, " or some equivalent, must take its place. . . . Wordsworth's poetry, again, is not wholly defensible from the charge of using in poetic measure an inelegant vocabulary. He believed in the poetry of common things, common thoughts, common people, and their common affairs. It was the aim of his life to lift up into the atmosphere of romance things lowly and obscure. "The Excursion" wrought in this respect one of the silent revolutions of literature in the direct interest of Christianity. But, in his attempt to effect that revolution, he did lean to an extreme. Even his regal imagination could not dignify such lines as these ; viz. :— A household tub, like one of those Width women use to wash their dothes. —Pitsus Notions of euphony are not the same all the world over. I once asked a pundit, a professor of poetry, what he considered to be the most melodious word in Banserit. His reply was, slakshna. And he was not jesting. —HALL. A practice almost indispensable to a satisfactory essay is to take it up, after revision according to every other standard has been completed, and read it aloud, noting for correction not only all harsh expressions, but all that the combination of sounds makes it difficult to enunciate. In Lincoln's first inaugural occurs the following phrase, the peculiar combination of consonants and labials of which can only be appreciated by an attempt (we use the word attempt advisedly) to read it aloud : "Will you hazard so desperate a step, while any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from?"—Magasine of American History. Variety is, finally, one of the most essential elements of perfection. In diction an extensive and daily widening vocabulary is indispensable (see pages 401403). I have long been in the habit of reading daily some first-class English author, chiefly for the copia verborum, to avoid sinking. into cheap and bald fluency, to give elevation, dignity, sonorousness, and refinement to my vocabulary. —CHOATE. It is a mark of weakness, of poverty of speech, or at least of bad taste, to continue the use of pet words, or other peculiarities of language, after we have become conscious of them as such. In dialect, as in dress, individuality founded upon anything but general harmony and superior propriety, is offensive, and good taste demands that each shall please by its total impression, not by its distinguishable details. —MAnsa. It is to be remarked that this very expression, "pet words, " Is a pet term of Yr. Marsh, occurring again and again in his "Lectures on the English Language. " Many of Mr. Carlyle's peculiarities of style as a writer are to be avoided rather than Imitated, but at the same time a writer whose pages present so strong a front as do his is worthy of analytical study. What gives to Mr. Carlyle's sentences that vigor and freshness so manifest to Everyone? A partial explanation is to be found in the richness of his vocabulary. Probably no man living in this age was so thoroughly acquainted with the Blueish dictionary as Mr. Carlyle, or used words more discriminatingly without marring his work with the appearance of labored construction. Take up any book of his and notice how seldom he has repeated even the smallest words in any given passage or paragraph. You rarely land more than one " and " in his longest sentences. Whole pewee may be traversed without discovering a single "the, " "to, " or "but. " Take up any of his writings, block out a section of one hundred words, and then count the distinct words that occur in it. , counting each word only once. Here are a few results of such a teat. In " Barter Resartue" to one hundred words in the text 84 individual words ; in the emay on " Ifirabeau, "es;in the essay on " Goethe, " 76; in the essay on " Burns, " 78 ; in the "French Revolution, " 90; in the "Reminiscences, " 81; in the short essay on the "Death of Goethe, " StThis last section commences with the amend paragraph of the essay, and contains few words of more than one syllable. These test 'elections have all been made at random, our only care being to avoid passeges containing several proper names and those disagreeable homemade adjectives of which Mr. Carlyle was so fond, words generally ending in " Joh. " They seem to the reader to have been brewed in that old teapot of his. Of course a writer could, put together intelligible sentences by the yard without duplicating his words, but what man or woman does without effort, and effort painfully apparent, ever achieve this phenomenal result? Probably Mr. Carlyle strove to keep the percentage of new words in every page as high as possible. There is reason for believing that his best productions—those that pour gurgling from the author's heart—have been measured, weighed, every drop examined in his penetrating mental microscope, before it went forth to mingle in the flood. His work was slow, tiring, and he came to the conclusion late in life that so much pains cost too much. Still Mr. Carlyle's fame as a literary artist must have fallen short if he had been lees careful in his etrokes. —N. C. Advocate. In movementthere must be a like variety. Long sentences must be interspersed with shorter ones, periodic structure must be followed by sharp, crisp utterance ; the reader must be kept constantly on the alert for something unexpected, never being suffered to adjust himself to a sing-song gait of which he has caught the rhythm. "It is here, " says Marmontel, "that we perceive the force of Lucian's comparison when he desired that the style and the thought, like a horseman and his horse, might be of one dill, and move together harmoniously. " And, as the same author adds, this oratorical motion is free and various ; the bold and skilful horseman, whose steed is well-trained, and obedient to the whip and spur, may sometimes venture to leap the highest fences and clear . the widestditches, but when the chase is over he will slacken his pace, and be content to walk slowly along the well-beaten bridlepath. —HERvEr. In La Fontaine, so many verses, no many different style' of thought But once Mae sillon hits on a certain kind of a sentence, he holds on to it with death-like grip, page after page. Like a horse-car unable to leave its tramway, like a canal-boat which cannot quit its canal, on he goes, without turning an inch to the right or left, and on you go with him. What is the consequence?A monotony that at last palls on the ear and actually stops the reader. Besides, even the splendid profusion of words is not without its uniformity. His incomparable talent of setting fortl? a single thought under such a variety of shapes had for a long time astounded me, dazzled me. I used to take for a new idea what was nothing but the same idea presented again and again under various different forms. But reading aloud soon convinced me that there was something artificial in this exuberant display. I began to feel as you feel at one of theme pieces where the same actor pretends to represent five or six different personages, whereas in realily the only thing changed ill the costume. Take a page of Saint-Simon, if you wish to realize more fully the idea that I wish to convey. He too repeats the same idea under twenty different shapes, but he does so as a clever magician turns one object into fifty by the blazing reflection of dazzling mirrors; he does so with the fire and hest of a man who, under the influence of a burning impree don, always considers his expressions too feeble to adequately represent his ideas. He fights and struggle. with his words to compel them to expresa what he means. He whips his language, spurs it, tortures it, driven it, overloads it, until at last it obeys him, sad becomes just as passionate, fiery, and headlong as himaelf. —Litootrrk. Felicity of diction is more than exactness and clearness. It expresses the idea so perfectly that the mind lingers for an instant to enjoy the perfection itself. Take, for instance, the two famous epitaphs by the poet whose own epitaph, "0 rare Ben Jonson, " is itself a remarkable illustration of felicity (note quotations from the first on page 222). ON THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE: Underneath this sable hearse, Lies the subject of all verse. Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ; Death I ere thou Mut slain another Learned and fair, and good as she, Time shall throw his dart at thee. Marble piles let no man raise To her name in after days; Some kind woman, born as she, Reading this, like Niobe Shall turn marble, and become Both her mourner and her tomb. ON MARGARET RATCLIFFE. X arble weep, for thou dot cover A dead beauty underneath thee R ich as nature could bequeath thee: G rant then no rude hand remove her. A 11 the gams in the skies, sad not in fair heaven's story E xpremier truth or truer glory T hen they might in her bright eyes. R are as wonder was her wit, A nd like nectar ever Sowing ; T ill time, stung by her bestowing, o onquered bath both life and it ; L ffe, whose grief was out of fashion n these times. Few so have rued F ate in a brother. To conclude, F or wit, feature, and time passion, E arth, thou hag not such another. In the history of the world what has really preserved the memories of writers of verse has not been intellectual force, or the clear expression of love or pity, or even wit, but a certain indefinable felicity of style, a power of saying things as they never were said before, and so that they can never be forgotten. . . . It is probable that this will preserve his Poe's verse, like a rose petal in a drop of glycerine, bound to decay because of its ephemeral and disconnected condition, yet never actually decaying. — Pail Hall Gazette. Everyone is familiar, and has been amused, with Macaulay's characteristic assertion that "the Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. " Few readers, however, are probably aware that Hume expresses identically the same idea. "Bear-baiting, " he says, "was esteemed heathenish and unchristian ; the sport, not the inhumanity, gave offence. " Inasmuch as Macaulay's motis known the world over and Hume's scarcely at all, we have an evidence how important is the way of putting things—more important, it seems, so far as notoriety is concerned, than the idea itselt—Appleton'sJournal. By cleverness I mean a comparative readiness in the invention and use of means for the realizing of objects and ideas—often of such ideas which the man of genius only could have originated, and which the clever man perhaps neither fully comprehends nor adequately appreciates, even at the moment that he isprompting or executing the machinery of their secompliannent. In shark eleverners is sort of genius far instrumentality. It Is the brain in the hand. In literature cleverness is merefrequently accompanied by wit, genius and sense by humer. —Courenotar The fitting word is always a prominent element of felicity. Who that has ever heard it can forget the line, Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low? Substitute synonyms, as, Her tone was always mild, trenquil, subdues], and what is there to linger in the memory ? As the result of all my reading and meditation. I abstracted two critical aphorisms, deeming them to comprise the conditions and criteria of poetic style : first, that not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power and claims the name of essential poetry ; secondly, that whatever lines can be translated into other words of the samelanguage without diminution of their significance, either in sense or association, or in any worthy feeling, are so far vicious in their diction. —Coutsmom Onomatopoeia, or a correspondence between the thing signified and the sound of the word employed, is often an element of fitness. In the line from "Lear, " just quoted, the word " soft " sounds like what it signifies, appealing to the ear as well as to the eye, and thus entering the mind by two avenues of sense. Compare : Him there they found Squat like a toad close at the ear of Eve. —Mwros. Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. —In. Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the sir, Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. —In. Her voice is but the shadow of a sound. —Youtro. Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone ; The huge round stone returning with a bound Thunders impetuous down, and smoker along the ground. —Porn. These equal syllables alone require Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire, While expletives their feeble aid do join And ten low words oft creep in one doll line. —In. Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar. —In. What! like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce, With arms, and George and Brunswick crowd the verse, Rend with tremendous sound your ears asunder, With gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss and thunder? Then all your muse's softer art display. Let Carolina smooth the tuneful lay, Lull with Amelia's liquid name the Nine, And sweetly flow through all the royal line. —In. The slender acacia would not shake One long milk-bloom on the tree ; The white lake-blossom fell into the lake While the pimpernel dozed on the lea. —Tiazwrsox. Here the plot is blanched By God's gift of a purity of rout That will not take pollution, ermine-like Armed from dishonor by its own soft snow. —Bnosrmxth. Pastiness and flatness are the qualities of a pancake, and thus far he attained his aim : but if he means it for me, let him place the accessories on the table lest what is insipid and clammy . . . grow into duller accretion and moister viscidity the more I masticate it. —LANDOB, of WOrdsworth. There is a familiar class of words called imitative, or, to use a hard term, onomatopoetic, where there is an evident connection between the sound and the sense. These are all, or nearly all, words descriptive of particular sounds, or acts accompanied by characteristic sounds, such as buzz, crash, gargle, gargle, hum, whiz, jar, bellow, roar, whistle, whine, creak, cluck, gabble, and in conversation we often allow ourselves to use words of this class, not to be found in the largest dictionaries. The remark of a contemporary of Dr. Johnson's, that much of the effect of his conversation was owing to his "bow-wow way, " will be remembered by Everyone. A great modern English poet, following the authority of Compare hiss, bang, helter-skelter, namby-pamby, hoity-toity, roly-poly, haramscartim, willy-nilly, nolens-volens, huggermugger. Sidney, has even introduced into verse a word borrowed from the voice of the sheep, when speaking of certain censurable follies he calls them "basing vanities. "—Manss. Besides these properties in words, of sweetness or harshness, strength or weakness, there is another quality to be attended to, whieh is expression, or the peculiar aptness of some words to stand as symbols of certain ideas preferably to others. And this aptness arises from different causes; the first and most striking is that of imitation, from which proceed those that may be called mimical sounds, such as the baa of the sheep, the hiss of serpents, the mew and purr of cats, the howl of the wolf, the brayof an ass, the whinny of a horse, the caw of the raven. . . . Such words contain a power of expression from a natural resemblance which can never belong to signs merely instituted. After these Inimical words, whose whole sounds are nearly the same with those formed by the several animals from which they were taken, there is another class which bears a fainter resemblance, merely from some letters contained in them, which were borrowed from the animal world. Thus among the vowels a was borrowed from the crow, (. 1 from the goat, ci from the sheep, oo from the dove, ofrom the ox, ow from the dog, etc. Of the consonants, we borrowed theb from the sheep, kfrom the crow, m from the ox, r from the dog, sfrom the serpent, th from the goose. We have also sounds resembling those made by inanimate objects. Thus fis like the sound of winds blowing through certain chinks. Vis the noise made by some spinning-wheels when rapidly moved. Shis the sound made by squibs and rockets previous to explosion. Sby the flight of darts. Ng by a bell. —SHERIDAN. Care must be taken to employ onomatopceia only as a means to more perfect expression ; if used for its own sake, it meets the common fate of all affectation. Especially must the misuse of words of this character be avoided. Poe, who uses onomatopceia with great effect, tells most happily of —the tintinnabulation that cio musically swells From the bells, bells, bells, belle; but when Dickens in " Dombey and Son " speaks of "the tintinnabulation of the gong" we stare at the page with wonder that his taste could have permitted the use of a figure so incongruous. Tautophony, or the repetition of the same sound, is usually a defect in composition, but is sometimes employed with happy effect to produce a peculiar emphasis. Thus Epictetus says that all philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain. The resemblance of the two words makes it easier to remember their distinction. Shedd is fond of this figure, as, for instance : Essential truth is the element, and the aliment, of a rational mind, and nothing short of this form of truth can long eatisfy its wants. use of "short" " and "long" is here questionable. But such usage is permitted only when the contrast between the Oro words is marked and obvious. On page 87 of this book will be found two instances ; "omitting—admitting, " and "instinctive—distinctive. " For the first pair there is a reason, but the second pair is due to a slip of the pen that oversight did not correct. This Usage easily slides into punning, which to a certain extent is permissible when plainly a means to the forcible expression of an idea. "Truth is mighty, " announces one stump-speaker, impressively. "Yes, it is mighty, " retorts his opponent, sarcastically, "mighty scarce. " There is always a certain satisfaction in seeing the person attacking beaten by his own weapons, . and this occurs when his words are so dexterously turned as to tell against him. "You are nothing but a demagogue, " said a tipsy fellow to Tom Marshall, who promptly replied : "Put a wisp of straw around you, and you will be nothing but a demijohn. " What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. "We must all hang together, " urged Hancock, after the signing of the Declaration of Independence ; "Yes, " added Franklin, "or we shall all bang separately. " A London paper says that "Mrs. Alma Tadema wore at a recent reception a dress of gold brocade, made with a cuirass bodice, with shoulder-straps of gold guipure, and a plain petticoat of gold color, trimmed with a deep gold ruche, the inside of which was lined with gray-green satin. " The Chicago Tribune understands that Mr. Alma Tadema wore a look of fixed melancholy. Herr thou, great Anna, whom three workls obey, Dora sometimes counsel take, and sometime teta—pops. The pun must be appropriate to the occasion, and its purpose manifest, or it will seem an oversight ; as when Max Muller declares, that "Sound etymology has nothing to do with sound. " Compare the use of the same words on page 66. The use of the same word successively as two different parts of speech is usually to be avoided ; yet under this principle it is sometimes effective, as in the following sentence, where "more" is used first as an adjective and then as an adverb. That he should be in earnest it is hard to conceive ; since any reasons of doubt which he might have in this case would have been reasons of doubt in the case of other men, who may give more but cannot give more evident signs of thought than their fellow-creatures. —BOLINGBROMIL Care must of course be taken not to be misled by the resemblance of sound. "I never get over a first feeling of repulsion, " says a young writer ; "if I am once repulsed. " But what he means is, "if I am once repelled. " "wish to be a friend to the friendless, " said &gushing speaker at a benevolent meeting, "a father to the fatherless, and widow to the windowless. " "Oh, I don't object to standing on a platform and allowing information to ooze out of me—to use Mark Twain's simile—like otter ofrosesout of the otter!" Alliteration, or the use of successive words beginning with the same letter, is a form of tautophony, and is often employed with happy effect, especially in poetry. So far has this figure been carried that long poems and stories have been written, in which every word began with the same consonant. CACOPHONOUS COUPLET ON CARDINAL WOLSEY. Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred, How high his honor holds his haughty bead. Mrs. Crawford says she wrote one line in her "Kathleen Mavounieen " on purpose to confound the Cockney warblers, who would sing it, So Moore— Or : The 'orn of the 'unter I. 'eard on the 'ill. A 'eart that is 'umble might 'ope for it 'ere. Ha helephant beauty heats hat hie home 'hinder humbrageous humbrella trees Whole poems have been written wherein every word begins with the same letter. Of these the best known is the " Pugna Porcornm, " containing about three hundred lines, Everyone of which begins with the letter P. . . . The poem "De Lando Calvoram " is perhaps the most curious literary performance in the world. This poem of one hundred and forty lines, every word of which begins with a C, was composed in honor of Charles the Bald, by Hugbaldi or Hugbald, a monk who flourished about the year 876. Perhaps the best English alliterative verse is the following : An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besiege Belgrade: Cosset commanders cannonading come, Dealing Destruction's devastating doom ; Every endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for fortune fighting—furious fray. Generals 'gainst generals grapple ; gracious God, How honors Heaven heroic hardihood Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Kinsmen kill kinsmen, kindred kinsmen kill. Labor low levels loftiest, longest lines ; Men march 'mid mounds, 'mid moles, 'mid murderous mine. ; Row noisy noxious numbers notice naught Of outward obstacles optioning ought ; Poor patriots, partly purchased, partly pressed, Quite quaking, quickly Quarter I Quarter I" quest. Reason returns, religious right redounds, Sorrow soon stops such 'sanguinary sounds. Truce to thee, Turkey, triumph to thy twain, Unjust, unwire, unmerciful Ukraine Vanish vain victory I vanish victory vain Why with we warfare? Wherefore welcome were Xerxes, Ximenes, Xanthus, Xavier ? Yield, yield, ye youth ; ye yeomen, yield your yell, Zeno', Zarpate's, Zoroaster's zeal, Attracting all, arms against arms appal I With like waste of labor the Lipogranirnatistsexcluded some particular letter from their compositions, while the PangrwamaLists crowd all the letters of the alphabet into each of their sentences. Both these attempts are shown in the following stanza written with ease without e's. A jovial swain may rack his brain, And tax his fancy's might, To quiz in vain, for 'tie most plain, That what I say is right. Lord Holland, in 1824, wrote a story, called "Eve's Legend, " that contained no pther vowel except e. The Acrostic is a poem in which the first letters of the successive lines spell a word that is the subject of the whole. The actress Rachel received the most delicate compliment the acrostic has ever paid. A diadem set with precious stones was given to her, so arranged that the initials of the names of the successive stones were in their order the initials of six of her principal parts, and in their order formed her name, thus : Ruby, R canna. A methyst, A meniade. C ornelian, 0 amille. H ematite, H ennlone. merald, S mills. L apis Lazuli, L sodice. In No. 60 of the Spectator, Addison says of theChronograrn : This kind of wit appears very often on modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they represent in the inscription, the year in which they were coined. Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus Adolphus the following words : ChrIatVe Du2C ergo trIVMphYs. If you take the pains to pick the thrums out of the several words, and range them in their proper order, you will Ind that they amount to 11IDOXVVVII. , or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped ; for, as some of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would think they were searching after an apt clamdcal term ; but, indeed, they are looking out word that has an II, an L, or a D in it. When, therefore, we meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look In them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord. The Anagramhides the word signified by transposing the letters so as to form a new word. Camden gravely announced that the following anagram showed the "undoubted rightful claim to the monarchy of Britain, BA successor of the valorous King Arthur, " of the prince whose name was transposed : Charles James Stuart—Claims Arthur's seat. Here is another : James Stuart—A just master. Lady Eleanor Davies, wife of the poet Sir John Davies, was the Cassandra of her day ; and as her prophecies, in the troubled times of Charles II. , were usually against the Government, she was at one time brought into the High Court of Commission. She was not a little mad, and fancied the spirit of Daniel was in her, from an anagram she had formed of her own name : meaner Davies—Reveal, 0 Daniel! This anagram had too much by an 1, and too little by an s, but such trifles as these were no check to her aspirations. The court attempted to expel the spirit from the lady ; and the bishops argued the point with her out of Holy Writ ; but to no purpose. She returned text for text, until one of the deans of the Arches, says Heylin, "shot her through and through with an arrow borrowed from her own quiver. " Taking up a pen, he wrote : Dame meaner Daviee—Never an mad ladle This happy fancy set the solemn court to laughing, and drove Cassandra to the utmost dejection of spirits. Foiled by her own weapon, her energy forsook her; and either she never afterward ventured to enrol herself among the order, or the anagram disarmed her utterances, for we hear no more of her among the prophets. In Rhoplialic Verses a monosyllable is followed by a dissyllable, a trisyllable, "and so on to the end of the line. The Palindrome reads the same either backward or forward ; like this, ascribed to Napoleon : Able was I ere I saw Elba ; or this, quite as plausibly reported as the first speech of the first MAR Madam, Pm Adam. Equivocal Versereads one way across both of two columns, and quite another when each column is taken separately. Thus : THE HOUSES OF STUART AND HANOVER. I love with all my heart The Hanoverian part And for that settlement My conscience gives consent, Most righteous is the cause To fight for George's laws, It is my mind and heart Though none will takenty part, The Tory party here Most hateful doth appear ; I ever have denied To be on James's aide, To fight for hitch a king Will England's ruin bring. In this opinion, I Resolve to live and die. Serpentine Lettersin like manner convey one meaning when read down each page, but a contrary when read across both pages. The swindling contract on page 201 is an illustration. Cento Verse ismade up by patching together lines from standard poems. Thus : The heath this night must be my bed, —Scart. Ye vales, ye streams, ye groves, adieu l—Posa. Farewell for aye, ceen love is d ad, —Patients. Would I could add, remembrance too !—Brnox. In Concatenation, or chain-writing, the last word or phrase in each line is taken for the beginning of the next. Thus : TRUTH. Nerve thy soul with doctrines noble, Noble in the walks of time, Time that leads to an eternal, An eternal life sublime ; Life sublime in moral beauty, Beauty that shall ever be; Ever be to lure thee onward, Onward to the fountain free; Free to every earnest seeker, Seeker for the Fount of Youth, Youth exultant in Its beauty, Beauty of the living truth. Echo Verses have been famous in every tongue. Thus : Bobo, mysterious nymph, declare Of what you're made, and what you are. —Air! Ben Janson speaks of "A pair of scissors and a comb in verse, " and theSpectator ridicules the fantastically shaped poems, axes, eggs, altars, etc. , of which a Greek poet, Theodoric, is said to have been the inventor. One of the best is the following : THE WINS-GLASS. Who bath woe ? Who loath borrow? Who bath contentions? Who bath wounds without cause? Who bath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine. They that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it tared, when it glveth its color in the 01TP when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Further illustrations of this misapplied ingenuity in the construction of verse will be found in Morgan's " Macaronic Poetry, " from which most that has been said on the subject has been taken. We have treated the subject thus fully in order to impress the principle that the moment form is studied for itself, and not for what it expresses, the exercise is no longer literary composition. We have used the word Perfection in preference to Beauty in speaking of this quality of style, because the only legitimate beauty of written language is the perfection with which it expresses the idea. Forget the idea, study beauty for the sake of beauty, permit the insertion or the retention of an unnecessary sentence for the sake of its euphony, and the composition is degraded from the expression of thought into something akin to riddle-making. The principal advantage of an acquaintance with form-peculiarities is readiness in discerning and discarding them when they accidentally appear. More than once has a newspaper been misled into publishing a libellous Acrostic, because the editor did not glance down the first letters of the lines when he read the little poem handed in ; and hundreds of farmers would have escaped a swindle had they applied the principle of Serpentine Letters to the contract shown on page 201. Commonest of all the errors under this head, however, is Tautophony. Only the most experienced writers can afford to let an essay appear before they have glanced through it to see that the same sound is not unintentionally repeated in a way to catch the ear unpleasantly. Thus : Scene at Continental kursaal : English party at card table" Hello, we are two to two. " English party at opposite table" We are two to two, too. " German spectator, who "speaks English, " to companion who is acquiring the language—" Yell, now you see how dis is. Off you want to gife expression to yourself in English all you have to do is to blay mit der French horn! "— N. Y. Sun. The fact is, the rules of emphasis come inin interruption of your supposed general law of position. —ALPORD. I used the word in an unusual sense, but at the same time one fully sanctioned by usage. —ID. Maybe I may beable to come before the year is out. —CatarL. Find other illustrations on pages 75, 125, 235. EXERCISE. —Varythe expression so as to escape tautophony in the following sentences : In a cairn moonlight night the sea is a most beautiful object to see. The abilities as well as the virtues of Ring Alfred justly entitled him to the title of the Great. To oppose this formidable invasion, the Royalists were divided into four divisions. Napoleon's ambition led him to aspire to universal dominion, the pursuit of which finally led to his complete overthrow. The writings of Buchanan are written with strength, perspicuity, and neatness. The same character has characterized their descendants in modern times. The few who regarded them in their true light were regarded as mere dreamers. It is not the least of the many attractions that permanently attract strangers to the French capital. This renowned fortress was of the very highest importance from its strength and important situation. Wellington was anxious to be relieved from all anxiety in that quarter. The designs of Providence extend to the extension and dispersion of the species. Seduced by these flattering appearances, the monarch appears for a time to have trusted to the pleasing hope that his difficulties were at an end. Avoidanceof tautophony, especially of the repetition of the same word, may, however, be carried so far as to obscure the sense (see page 411). Thus Marsh writes (" Lectures on the English Language, " page 22) : I must here once for alrmake the sad concession that many of Chaucer's works are disfigured, stained, polluted, by a grossness of thought and of language which strangely and painfully contrasts with the delicacy, refinement, and moral elevation of his other productions. Here we have "works" apparently contrasted with "productions, " as though they were two different things. The author might much better have said "of his other works ;" though indeed, "of the others, " or "of the rest, " would be precise and perspicuous. Compare the following : Itis said there was an Amsterdam merchant who had dealt largely in corn all his life, who had never seen a field of wheat growing : this man had doubtless acquired by experience an accurate judgment of the qualities of each description o oorn, —of the best methods of storing it, of the arts of buying and selling it at proper times, etc. ; but he would have been greatly at a loss in its cultivation, though he had been, in a certain way, long conversant about corn. Campbell has well remarked : It is justly observed by Abbe Girard that when a performance grows dull through an excess of uniformity, it is not so much because the ear is tired by the frequent repetition of the same sound, as because the mind is fatigued by the frequent recurrence of the same idea. If, therefore, there be a remarkable paucity of ideas, a diversity of words will not answer the purpose, or give to the work an agreeable appearance of variety. On the contrary, when an author is at great pains to vary his expressions, and for this purpose even deserts the common road, he will, to an intelligent reader, but the more expose his poverty the more he is solicitous to conceal it. Proverbs, Aphorisms, Apothegms, Paradoxes, and Epigrams admit considerable attention to form, being usually marked by antithesis, climax, tautophony, alliteration, and other figures that would be oppressive in continued discourse. Proverbs, "the wit of one and the wisdom of many, " forcibly express some practical truth, the result of experience or observation ; as, "He runs far that never turns. " The pithy quaintness of old Howell has admirably described the ingredients of an exquisite proverb to be sense, shortness, and salt. . . . Proverbs have often resulted from the spontaneous emotions or the performed reflections of some extraordinary individual, whose energetic expression was caught by a faithful ear, never to perish. -DP/RAW:I A woman is as old as she looks ; A man as old as he feels. Aphorismsdiffer from proverbs in relating to abstract truth, rather than to practical matters. An apho rism is the substance of a doctrine, and is characterized by the disproportion between the simplicity of the expression and the richness of the sentiment conveyed by it (Smith) ; as, Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. That aphorism of the wise man, "The desire of the slothful killeth him, for his hands refuse to labor. "—Baulow. Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. —Surryr. There are calumnies against which even innocence loses courage. —NaroLzort. There is a great difference between an egg and an egg-shell, but at a distance they look very much alike. —Comunuoz. Thought widens, but lames ; activity narrows, but quickens. — GOETHE. Men ride their arguments as children their horses. They put their legs over a stick, run far afield, and make believe that the stick has carried them. —Dames. Custom has no power over us except as it implies sympathy with ourselves in past conditions. —In. Incredulity is but Credulity seen from behind, bowing and nodding assent to the Habitual and the Fashionable. —COLERIDGE. Thought is like the spring of a watch, most powerful when most compressed. Wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. —Wammr. Apothegms are in common matters what aphorisms are in higher. Their characteristic is terseness, as shown in Punch'8 adviceto those about to be married : "Don't. " Maurice Block describes the American press as "despotism tempered by assassination. "—Atlantic Monthly. "I would bestow my daughter, " said Themistocles, "upon a man without money, rather than upon money without a man. " My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon. —Smxuy Slurs. The following notes passed between two celebrated comedians : Dian J—: Bend me a shilling. Yours, B. P. 8. —On second thoughts, make it two. To which his friend replied : DRAB B—: I have but one shilling in the world. Yours, J. P. 8. —On second thoughts, I want that for dinner. The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages. — Swfpr. Fontenelle declared that the secret of happiness is to have the heart cold and the stomach warm. Montesquieu put forth a wicked epigram, that the only good book of the Spaniards is that which exposes the absurdity of all the rest. Paragraphers get very wealthy if they live long enough. The chief difficulty with them is to get money to live long enough. This reminds me of the boy who grew impatient at the slow grinding of the wheat he had brought to mill. "I could eat that flour faster than you turn it out, " he said to the miller. "How long ? " "Till I starved. " Mark Twain was asked to contribute to the paper issued at the fair in aid of abused children, in Boston, and responded as follows : H ARTTORD, November 80, 11384. DLit' Eprroas : I do it with pleasure, . . . but I also do it with pain, because I am not in favor of this movement. Why should I want a "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" to prosper, when I have a baby down-stairs that kept me awake several hours last night, with no pretext whatever for it but a desire to make me trouble ? This occurs every night, and it embitters me, because I see how needless it was to put in the other burglar alarm, a costly and complicated contrivance which cannot be depended on, because it's always getting out of order and won't' go. " whereas, although the baby is always getting out of order, too, it can nevertheless be depended on, for the reason that the more it does get out of order the more it does go. Yes, I am bitter against your society, for I think the idea of it is all woes ; but if you will start a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Fathers, I will write you a whole book. Yoram with emotion, MARI TWAIN. Life would be tolerably agreeable if it were not for its pleasures. —Sra G BOROR CORNEWALL LEWIS. Our knowledge consists in tracing ignorance as far back as possible. —Itorzs COLLARD. I do not love even his faults. —Snzamerr. Artemas Ward voted during the late Civil war for Henry Clay. "I admit that Henry is dead, " he explained, "but inasmuch as we don't seem to have a live statesman in our National Congress, by all means let us have a first-class corpse. " Paradoxes are seemingly absurd in appearance and language, but true in fact. Thus : Of Mr. Grote, the historian of Greece, and Mrs. Grote, Sidney Smith once wittily said : "I do like them both so much, for he is so ladylike, and she is such a perfect gentleman !" Thackeray's idea of a dandy is given in the following note : "My dear Edward, —A 'dandy' is an individual who would be a lady if he could, but as he can't, does all he can to show the world he's not a man. " A beau is everything of a woman but the sex, and nothing of a man beside R. —FIELDING. There are lots of men who have attained high reputation for strict attention to business, but the trouble has been it wasn't their own business. —Marathon Independent. Glucose is described in a recent French paper as follows : " Glucoso—s product with which wine is manufactured without grapes, cider without apples, and confectionery without sugar. " Definitions of the Period. —A privileged person—One who is so Each a savage when thwarted that civilized persons avoid thwarting him. A liberal-minded man—One who disdains to prefer right to wrong. Radicals—Men who maintain the supposed right of each of us to help ruin all. Liberals—Men who flatter radicals. Conservatives—Men who give way to radicals. A domestic woman—A woman like a domestic. Humor—Thinking in fun while we feel in earnest. A musical woman—One who has strength enough to make much noise and obtuseness enough not to mind it. —Gzonuz Emir. I owe much ; I have nothing. I leave the rest to the poor. - RABELAIS'S Will. When the superannuated statesman went to his rest : "Lamartine has ceased to survive himself, " announced a Paris journal. Prince Metternich remarked to the best-dressed lady of the Second Empire :"I notice that your bonnets grow smaller and smaller, and the bills larger and larger. One of these days the milliner will bring nothing but the bill. " TOPICAL ANALYSIS. Perfection. Epigrams, p. 467. Retort, p. 467. Brilliancy, p. 467. Euphony, p. 469. Reading the essay aloud, p. 470. Variety in words, p. 470. Variety in movement, p. 471. Felicity of diction, p. 472. The fitting word, p. 474. Onomatopoeia, p. 474. Tautophony, p. 477. Punning, p. 477. Alliteration, p. 479. Lipogrammatists, p. 480. Pangrammatists, p. 480. Acrostics, p. 480. Chronograms, p. 480. Anagrams, p. 481. Rhophalic verses, p. 482. Equivocal verse, p 4432. Serpentine letters, p. 482. Cento verse, p. 482. Concatenation, p. 482. Echo verses, p. 483. Advantage of an acquaintance with form peculiarities, p. 484. Avoidance of tautophony carried too far, p. 485. Proverbs, p. 486. Aphorisms, p. 486. Apothegms, p. 487. Paradoxes, p. 489 category:Writing techniques